"Scaring The Public to Death"

By Frank Trippett

bicycle: lightweight, two-wheeled, steerable machine propelled by its rider; the bicycle is said to be the most efficient means yet devised to convert human energy into propulsion.

-- The New Encyclopaedia Britannica

A marvel of efficiency, the bicycle is also cheap, handy, nimble. It can sprint like a cat, then stop on a dime and give you nine cents change. It is easy to ride and speedy enough for any sane short-distance traveler. In the typical bumper-to-bumper city creepathon the bike can outrun a Porsche.

Unlike the car, truck and bus, the bike does not spew stinky fumes and carcinogens. A bike is easy to park in a sliver of space, and of precious oil it needs only a smidgen to keep the wheels squeakless. Riders may turn rowdy, but the vehicle itself is quiet -- a blessed virtue amid the squawk-bleat- scream-grind-growl-honk-toot-wail-shr iek that is the voice of the big city.

Given such merits, the bicycle ought to be universally embraced by humankind as a sensible way of getting about in the strangling, traffic- plagued city. Bicycles have long been a major mode of transport in Europe and Asia; there are as many as 230 million of them in China. Now they have taken to U.S. streets with a vengeance. According to Bill Wilkinson, director of the Bicycle Federation of America, roughly 2 million people commute to work on bikes, up from approximately 500,000 a decade ago.

Still, though Americans have always liked two-wheelers as a child's plaything, and currently own 111 million of them, they have never truly welcomed the bike as a serious vehicle. In fact, wherever it appears in numbers, the bicycle provokes tension, annoyance, outrage or hostility. This year bikers from Manhattan to Denver, from Oregon to Missouri, have wound up in conflicts: bikers vs. motorists, bikers vs. pedestrians, bikers vs. runners, bikers vs. police.

In Washington the overlap of bicyclists and Pentagon-based joggers has turned the Arlington Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River into an anger zone. Last month bikers were banned from hiking trails in California's Santa Monica mountains. In St. Louis, where a motorist has been known to slosh a bucket of water on a cyclist in cold weather, someone sprinkled tacks on the route of a Labor Day cycle tour and flattened the tires of some 40 bikes. Motorist-biker tensions around St. Louis grew high last month after Bicyclist John S. Reif Jr., 22, a nationally ranked triathlete, was fatally injured in a head-on collision with a car. Speaking of the current mood, Deeds Fletcher, 47, a municipal-bond dealer and a cyclist, says it often feels as if "cars are going after people. It's like the Christians and the lions."

In Boulder police in July snared and ticketed a flight of 55 cyclists racing past a stop sign, and Steve Clark, the city's bicycle-program coordinator, applauded the crackdown: "When one segment of the group creates bad p.r., it hurts all cyclists." In Eugene, Ore., according to Bicycle Coordinator Diane Bishop of the public-works department, police patrol university areas, especially in their annual autumn bike-safety campaign, in which, she says, "they ticket as many as 100 riders a month." Proliferating cyclists reduced Denver Post Sports Columnist John McGrath to epithet: "Look around: geeks in long black shorts are hunched over a pair of handlebars at every urban intersection, on every country road."

Nowhere has the bike provoked such a sustained and official skirmish as in New York City. Mayor Ed Koch, who suffered a probike mood in 1980 and had bike lanes built, had them eliminated a few months later. By this year Koch had become so antibike that he banned the cycles from several major Manhattan avenues. The state supreme court in Manhattan overturned the ban last month, but did not overturn Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward's opinion about the city's pedalers. "They are scaring the public to death," says Ward, "and we've got to do something about it."

"It" means the free-form riding habits of 5,000 or so messengers. Inspired by the fact that more deliveries mean more money, many messengers whiz around the city in pseudokamikaze style, heeding neither red lights nor one-way signs, zagging on and off sidewalks, leaving behind a wake of screeching tires and cursing pedestrians. Many messengers even opt for bikes without brakes, to save on a few pounds of heavy metal.

There were 640 reported incidents of bikes colliding with pedestrians in New York City last year, up from 339 in 1981. Three New York City pedestrians were killed by cyclists in 1986, while nine bikers were killed by motorists. "They are like roaches," complains Anita Sockol, who was crossing Lexington Avenue in June when she was floored by a speeding cyclist. She suffered a broken hip and wrist, and now limps. "They come at you from all sides," she adds.

Even cyclists admit that some bike riders act like pit bulls on wheels, but enthusiasts attribute most accidents to impatient walkers, many of whom insist on waiting in crosswalks for the light to change. "Most pedestrians don't look before they cross the street," says Eric Williams, a Manhattan messenger. "I've pulled so hard to stop that I've got scars to prove it."

The numbers prove that Manhattan's reckless-bike-riding problem is not trivial. Even so, the ire stirred by the bikers is striking. Some argue (not too convincingly) that the antipathy toward messengers, who are mostly black, is racially motivated. But that does not explain the shouts of anger directed at white speed demons by startled white pedestrians.

Efforts are being made all over to educate bikers about traffic rules and to train motorists in the ways of bikers. In Los Angeles, state and county planners are even contemplating a 2 1/2-mile-long overhead bikeway that would rise above the congested streets around UCLA. But the real culprit on American roads, as conspicuous among cars, cabs and trucks as among cyclists, is an arrogant, scofflaw spirit that sends vehicles -- those with four as well as two wheels -- streaking through red lights and stop signs, just as it tempts pedestrians into habitual jaywalking.

With reporting by Wayne Svoboda/New York, with other bureaus